HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2008 / JULY/AUGUST / LIVING BY THE SPIRIT

JULY / AUGUST 2008
VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4

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D E P A R T M E N T S

Living by the SPIRIT

Unconditional surrender!
Michael Hicks

During the month of January, 1861, the southern states seceded, one by one, from the United States of America. In February of the same year, they established their own Confederate government. On April 12, one month and eight days after President Lincoln's inauguration, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in what became the initial engagement of the Civil War.

Nearly one year later, on February 16, 1862, Union General Ulysses S. Grant sent a message to Confederate General Buckner: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted". With that message, U.S. Grant became known as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

It was not until April 9, 1865, that U.S. Grant's terms were finally met and the war was brought to an end. When General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant that day, he knew Grant would offer him no conditions. In spite of Grant's terms of unconditional surrender, however, he was generous enough to provide 25,000 meals to very hungry Confederate soldiers and allowed them to go home with their horses so they could start spring planting.

My love of history and my study of the civil war has taught me a lot about surrender. As a civil war re-enactor I have surrendered many times to the enemy. Of course, my surrenders were feigned. I only symbolically gave up my weapons, my freedom, and my plans for praise and honor in victory. I was acting the part for the audience.

My years of re-enacting have caused me to ask myself about the role of surrender in my life. When I thought of unconditional surrender to Jesus in relationship to my years in the Seventh-day Adventist church, I realized that I often feigned surrender to many external behaviors required by the church. Being "born" into Adventism gave me an identity that actually held me captive. When I was born again by faith in Christ I was finally able to enjoy the freedom for which He had set me free. What might have been my incentive to surrender to church mandates? The surrender was in reality conditional upon gaining approval by family and friends, of having the privileged status of being in the "one true remnant church," and of having the praise of people for performing well.

 

Burden lifted

In 1980 I began to evaluate why I found so many conflicts between the unique teachings of the Adventist church and the Scriptures. It took over 20 years for me to be shown by the Holy Spirit why the conflicts would not go away. The conflicts existed because the Adventist teachings were false.

Releasing my grip on the security blanket of Adventism was a form of surrender. My final letting go was in July of 2003. That evening I stopped by the Adventist church in which my wife and I had been singers in the praise band a couple of years before. I was thinking of returning to the comfort zone of acceptance by rejoining the worship team. The conversation with the leader was as cold as ice.

God had planned a different appointment for me that evening. More than a year before a friend at work who had left Adventism had told me of a Bible study for former Adventists at the local Evangelical Free church. I decided then and there to find this group. The Former Adventist Fellowship welcomed me to the study of the Scriptures and provided many books rich in Biblical exposition for my personal study.

I was finally willing to look at the teachings of Adventism that I had known were in conflict with Scripture but for which I had been hoping to find convincing explanations that would stop the roaring dissonance in my mind. My study of the word revealed how high and thick the walls of Adventism really were. The veil was finally torn, and I began to see that Christ Jesus was my eternal rest. God himself had taken me captive, and when He removed the blindfold from my eyes, I found that I had surrendered to a new Commander who loved me as his adopted son.

The burden I carried for years has been lifted. My new Commander has given me so much more than one meal before sending me on my way. Jesus gave me his broken body as the bread of eternal life. The battle between my old human nature and my new life of freedom in the Holy Spirit continues (Romans 7 and 8), but I know that the victory has already been secured by Jesus through His blood shed on the cross.

I have finally made my unconditional surrender. †
 

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Michael Hicks grew up Adventist and attended Southern Adventist College and Andrews University. For the past 29 years he has been a Physician Assistant in emergency and family medicine. He and his wife Janice have three children and three grandchildren between them. They are civil war re-enactors and are pictured here as Captain and Mrs. Ellis Spear of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. They worship at Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Redlands, California and are active in Former Adventist Fellowship.